Family violence victims face 'wall of lethal indifference'

Over the last year, 60 Australian women have died at the hands of family members. As Australians commemorate White Ribbon Day around the country and pledge to take a personal stand against violence in the home, questions remain about whether we're doing enough at a state and federal level to end the deaths, especially those of Indigenous women. Earlier this year the Western Australian Coroner released the findings into the death of Perth woman Andrea Pickett, who was murdered by her husband. The coroner found that when Andrea turned to various organisations for help -- police, Indigenous legal services and domestic violence shelters -- they all failed her.

Transcript

Damien Carrick: Hello. Welcome to the Law Report. Each week one Australian woman is killed by her current or former partner. Last Sunday was White Ribbon Day, a day where we remember the victims of family violence. In her address to the nation, Governor-General Quentin Bryce said, Australia must have a zero tolerance approach to domestic violence.

Quentin Bryce: Domestic violence is insidious. It crosses all socio-economic boundaries. It causes lasting physical, emotional and economic damage to the victims, to their families, and to the futures of our children. This issue has been an unspoken evil in our midst for too long and it’s time to speak up loudly and clearly.

Damien Carrick: And over the past week thousands of Australians gathered at events all around the country to speak up loudly and clearly and take a personal stand against violence in the home.

Voice: I swear never to commit, excuse or remain silent about violence against women. This is my oath.

Voice: I swear never to commit, excuse or remain silent…

Damien Carrick: In Melbourne’s Federation Square, hundreds climbed up onto the stage to make a personal pledge against family violence. At around the same time at another rally in Perth, 22 coffins were laid out in front of the WA Supreme Court, one for each West Australian man, woman and child who had died in an act of family violence over the last 12 months.

Angela Hartwig, an advocate for survivors, says the WA family violence death toll has doubled this year.

Angela Hartwig: This year there were 13 more than last year. So there was 22 deaths. So there was huge, sort of, concern around that level of increase within the last year.

Damien Carrick: 22 coffins—the number of deaths has doubled in WA over the last 12 months; do you know why?

Angela Hartwig: Well, I mean, I think there’s certainly something that’s not working as well as it could. We can, sort of, look at a whole range of reasons why. I think, you know, if we want to try and reduce the numbers of deaths, I think we need to look at trying new things.

Damien Carrick: Do we know what percentage of victims of family violence are Indigenous?

Angela Hartwig: Well around 50 per cent, which is enormously high. And we also know that Aboriginal women are nine times more likely to be a domestic homicide victim as well. So statistically, Aboriginal women are at far greater risk.

Angela Hartwig: Domestic violence advocate Angela Hartwig. Earlier this year the WA Coroner released its findings into the death of Perth Indigenous woman Andrea Pickett, who was murdered by her husband. Gary Bentley is Andrea Pickett’s brother.

Gary Bentley: Andrea was a mother first and foremost, 13 children. A loving family member…do anything for her family, Thirty-nine years of age when she passed away. Just an all around…just a really nice lady.

Damien Carrick: And she was killed by her former estranged partner?

Gary Bentley: That’s correct. In January 2009, he broke into the house where she was seeking refuge and stabbed her 17 times.

Damien Carrick: And tragically this was not an unpredictable outcome was it?

Gary Bentley: No, not at all. At least in the last 12 months she was reporting numerous breaches of the restraining order that she had against him. And the events leading up…especially in the last couple of months of her life, were fairly obvious that he was going to do what he did.

Damien Carrick: So she went to the police. Were they able to respond in any meaningful way?

Gary Bentley: She went to the police on a number of occasions and I think Andrea became very disillusioned with the way that her case was being handled. She believed herself that they weren’t interested, weren’t taking her seriously. They failed her by not following upon her complaints and to one point even throwing out a number of them without even investigating them.

Damien Carrick: She also sought access to safe housing through women’s refuges. That wasn’t successful either was it?

Gary Bentley: Not at all. Andrea, while she was running, had her seven youngest ranging from 18 months through to 11, 12 years of age. One of them was a boy.

One of the problems with the refuges is that they don’t like to take young boys over 10. So that almost already disqualified her from so many places—if they were available. And when she rang requesting a refuge or accommodation in crisis care, she was told that there were no places available in the Perth area. However we later discovered that there were places available just outside of Perth. Andrea had a vehicle; she had a small bus and she would have quite happily have travelled the four hours to the refuge that was available. But it was never offered to her and the crisis care officer that had spoken to her, in her first statement before our…the inquest, stated very clearly that she didn’t offer any alternatives because in her experience—and that were her words—in her experience, nobody ever accepted them anyway. So that was never offered.

Damien Carrick: Did your sister also seek legal representation, maybe to kind of pursue issues around the breaches of the intervention orders?

Gary Bentley: In January 2008 when she first went to get the violence restraining order, Andrea approached an organisation called Aboriginal Legal Service which represents Aboriginal…helps Aboriginal people in WA and I’m pretty sure they’re throughout Australia. ALS as we call it, couldn’t help her because he’d already been there, so she was conflicted out. And that was in 2008. And she did try again at a later date and again, the same sort of thing: she was conflicted out. So she…she had no chance of getting help from them, and turned to the…Legal Aid, I think, to assist her, to try to get the VRO and all the other bits and pieces that go along with all the things that come up with the VRO and the reports and stuff like that.

Damien Carrick: A violence restraint order?

Gary Bentley: Sorry, yes, a Violence Restraining Order.

Damien Carrick: Was she able to get that help from WA Legal Aid?

Gary Bentley: She got assistance through them yes, after she was conflicted out from ALS.

Damien Carrick: Is that an important point for you, that she wasn’t able to get legal representation which might have been culturally knowledgeable or informed by an understanding of Indigenous culture?

Gary Bentley: Absolutely. Andrea would have preferred to speak to another Aboriginal person. It’s a lot easier; they understand the families and how we think, our culture, our way of doing things, whereas going to mainstream organisations, it’s…they don’t always get what’s really happening in the families or around the families. I think that if an organisation was available in the Perth area—which there isn’t—for Aboriginal women to be able to access, she would have definitely have taken that opportunity and gone straight there.

We were told that there were no…not one register that would show how many rooms were available. They literally had to ring around to all the refuges. I believe now the lesson they learned from that was, now they have a register that’s coordinated and they can check with the Women’s Council or they’re centralised into one spot. So that’s a benefit. Whether they’re following through on other lessons learnt, for instance, when a woman or a person calls Crisis Care for help, one of the things that at the inquest that was identified is that they did not have any contact details for Andrea.

Now when we were looking back through their records from…that were presented at the inquest there were at least three occasions where they had Andrea’s name and telephone number and they never tried them to try to contact her. They said they couldn’t…didn’t have her number. We were assured at that time of the inquest, that they had changed in their system…the new system that came in place actually, it was a mandatory field now. First thing you need to do is put in a name and a telephone number. I know for a fact that that’s still not happening today.

Damien Carrick: You’re sure that that is still happening, people are not getting the contact numbers?

Gary Bentley: Absolutely. My sister, my other sister, was required to call Crisis Care on behalf of somebody else and after a ten minute conversation my sister asked the woman on the other end of the line for her name and then this woman asked her for her…my sister’s name. Didn’t ask for a telephone number and my sister actually happened on to it because she was ringing around for this person from a pre-paid phone. The phone ran out of credit so… If this would have been a woman in Andrea’s situation—and most women running in situations like that don’t have money—he’s…the perpetrator’s usually the one controlling everything. So if they’ve got very limited funds and they’re not even getting a telephone number off the person that’s trying to seek assistance then there’s definitely got to be more deaths because of it.

Damien Carrick: And your sister was involved in that telephone call on behalf of somebody in crisis just recently?

Gary Bentley: This was about three weeks ago.

Damien Carrick: Gary Bentley brother of murder victim Andrea Pickett.

The coroner found that when Andrea turned to various organisations for help, they all failed her. Charandev Singh worked with the family of Andrea Pickett as a volunteer family inquest advocate.

Charandev Singh: Well in summary it said that there was a cumulative and systemic failure to protect Andrea. And it’s not really a question of speculation whether if police and corrections and parole and Department of Child Protection had worked barely adequately that Andrea would be alive. She would be alive. We don’t have to speculate. She would be alive. We wouldn’t behaving this conversation. Your listeners would not be hearing her name. But the coroner found significant and cumulative failures of all of those departments to different degrees that effectively contributed to Andrea’s murder.

Damien Carrick: Were there recommendations from the inquest and have they been acted upon?

Charandev Singh: There were a number of recommendations aimed towards Department of Corrective Services, the parole authorities, Department for Child Protection and the whole of the Western Australian Government. But Western Australia doesn’t have a legislative mechanism that compels those same government departments who failed Andrea, and have failed so many other families, to actually have to report against the recommendations. So again, the onus is on the family to go through this long process of seeking accountability and seeking responses from each and every government department and trying to hold them in…hold them to account, hold them to doing their job.

Damien Carrick: I know Andrea’s case is a very complex one. But can you distil down for me what you would like to see as lessons learned from her death and the implementation of the findings of the coronial inquiry?

Charandev Singh: Well on one hand Andrea’s death, Andrea’s murder, and the systemic failures that contributed to Andrea’s murder, are very simple and glaring ones. And basically the intensity of Andrea’s fears for herself and her family were never really taken seriously and never responded to with the diligence and the urgency that was absolutely needed—and absolutely apparent to anyone who wasn’t in uniform or wasn’t in a government department.

Andrea did everything legally possible to protect herself and her family. And she was met with almost a wall of complete and lethal indifference.

Damien Carrick: Her brother Gary was just speaking about his sister and her interactions with a crisis line which…where there don’t seem to have been…where there…best practice…perhaps best practice is not taking place on the ground at the moment. What still needs to be done?

Charandev Singh: Well I think the fact that even in the year of Andrea’s inquest, you know, there’s been a doubling in the number of family violence homicides in WA. That, again, sheds a searing light on this fundamental profound disconnect between what government and police are saying they’re doing and what’s happening in the lived experiences of women and children and men who are dying in DV situations.

Damien Carrick: One final question; Gary Bentley was telling me that his sister approached Aboriginal Legal Aid in WA, which is a well-regarded organisation, I must say, but they declined to offer her any legal assistance with respect to the conflicts with her estranged partner who ultimately killed her, murdered her. Can you tell me about some of the issues around provision of Aboriginal family violence legal services in WA?

Charandev Singh: Aboriginal family violence prevention legal services are predominantly funded by the Commonwealth. And the Commonwealth’s policy for almost a decade has been that funding for family violence legal services will not be provided in urban areas. So they’ll only be provided in regional and rural and remote areas. And it was the Commonwealth’s expectation that the states and the territory governments would pick up responsibility for funding urban service provision. That’s not happened anywhere but Victoria and that’s been a long battle in Victoria.

So the reality for Andrea and the reality for other women and children and men fleeing family violence—Aboriginal women and children fleeing family violence—is that if you’re in an urban environment where…and you’re fleeing family violence, you will not have access as a consequence of policy and funding decisions, by the federal government and the states, to a dedicated, culturally safe legal service that is dedicated to the fundamental protections for victims and survivors who are fleeing.

If Andrea’s life and the lives of all the other victims of family violence are to have any value, then we would meet this need. We would say, forget the quarrel, someway we’re going to provide an adequate level of legal and advocacy and support and safe housing so that women don’t have to flee with their babies in their arms in the face of almost lethal indifference from government agencies. And empty arguments about cost shifting from federal and state governments…that’s what happened to Andrea in Western Australia in one of the most wealthiest places in the world from a government perspective. And how can that be? How can that be acceptable?

Damien Carrick: Charandev Singh, who worked with the family of Andrea Pickett as a volunteer family inquest advocate. He says that until very recently coronial inquiries into family homicides have been extremely rare. This is slowly changing. And over the last four years in Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland, there has also been the development of specialist family violence death review processes, which examine the big picture surrounding a death and where systems have failed. Domestic violence advocate Angela Hartwig says Andrea Pickett’s murder has led to the creation of this kind of system in WA.

Angela Hartwig: Well yes. And actually out of the tragic death of Andrea the Women’s Council lobbied that year at the Memorial March for such a fatality review committee in WA. It has taken three years but we have got one, and it started operating as of 1 July this year and already they have nine deaths to review. So yes, there are some systems in place now to review deaths at that systemic level. And that was long overdue; that was something that has been needed and as a result of Andrea’s death, I think has triggered the need for the look at where services could have perhaps intervened earlier, perhaps should have followed up, where they didn’t and where there’s some systems failures.

Damien Carrick: WA domestic violence advocate, Angela Hartwig. I’m Damien Carrick and you’re listening to the Law Report on ABC Radio National, Radio Australia and ABC News Radio, today looking at family violence.

You can find today’s story and more online at abc.net.au/radionational and from there, follow the links through to the Law Report page.

One of the reforms that Gary Bentley is fighting for is the creation of a legal service that specifically addresses the needs of Perth-based Indigenous women, people like his sister Andrea. The federal government does fund such services to Indigenous women in remote and regional areas around the country. It says states and territories should come to the party and fund similar services in metropolitan areas. But so far Victoria is the only state to have done so.

Antoinette Braybrook is the CEO of the Victorian Family Violence Prevention Legal Service. I asked her why Indigenous women need to have a legal service that is aimed directly at them.

Antoinette Braybrook: Firstly, I need to bevery clear that there are so many barriers to accessing mainstream legal services for Aboriginal people generally and especially for Aboriginal women who are victims of family violence.

Damien Carrick: What are those obstacles?

Antoinette Braybrook: Look, you know, to put it bluntly, there’s still racism and alack of awareness around cultural issues for Aboriginal women. You know: an awareness of the reluctance to report to police because there’s, you know, very little trust and confidence in the legal system generally.

Our organisation is an Aboriginal community controlled organisation and we, I guess, put in the hard yards in our communities, unlike mainstream services, where we go out to our communities. We know that Aboriginal women will not just walk through our door to seek out assistance. We have to go to our communities and our women out in those communities. So we’ve been able to do that through community legal education, and one of our very successful programs, Sisters Day Out—which, by the way, to date we’ve had more than 5000 Aboriginal women participate in our Sisters Day Out program—we, a few years ago, thought, well, you know, how are we going to get women to come to a workshop on family violence? Oh, we won’t call it family violence, we’ll call it Sisters Day Out and we’ll have pampering. So we have, you know, we pull in pamperers from the different areas that we go to—hairdressing, massage, manicure—and, you know, mainstream and Aboriginal services come and set up information booths about their services. So we’d have health, housing, Centrelink. I think we’ve had…we do actually have police coming to Sisters Day Out and you know, other family violence services in the area.

So at our workshop we run a session on, you know, what is family violence? And then we also talk about what type of legal assistance we can provide if anyone is experiencing that violence. And then our lawyers are available for private legal advice.

Damien Carrick: In Victoria I understand that the state government has come to the party and it does fund urban-based branches of your service. Is that right?

Antoinette Braybrook: Look, we’ve been successful in securing funding from the state to be able to service the urban area. But I need to stress that that funding is not recurrent, it’s limited term; we have to fight from one year to the next for that funding. And two of our key positions, one…we’ve got a child protection solicitor position and a family violence solicitor position which are both, you know, coming to an end early next year—as early as February—so that’s our next big challenge.

Jenni Smith is the organisation’s principle solicitor. She says Indigenous women enduring domestic violence have a number of urgent needs. But they also have enormous difficulty placing their trust in anyone and that’s why her legal service is so important.

Jenni Smith: Our paralegal support workers…we have six in total, three of them are Aboriginal. So that’s such a significant and important point, that they have connections in the community. They have, even just on the face of it, there’s kind of a different level of trust. So that’s the first…that’s the first kind of intake as we call it, that our clients will be talking to a paralegal support worker who have been trained to identify, you know, all of the needs of the client as much as they can.

So the first things that happen are, often we’ll have a client in crisis. If they haven’t already been referred to a domestic violence women’s service, we do that. We have very strong links with Elizabeth Hoffman House, which is the Indigenous women’s refuge service. So we often work with their intake workers directly, so that women are…first a client’s able to be put into a safe situation. So it’s not the legal response first, it’s the safety response. And that underlies I guess a lot of our work.

So that’s the first thing. We then, through the paralegals, we would then link them up to a counselling service. I mean, you know, sometimes we have clients who are suicidal, who are helpless, who are in, you know, huge kind of angry states. So we have to help and support them to get to a position so that they’re able to understand—well we assist them to understand—what’s going on in terms of the legal processes around them.

Damien Carrick: And so then you’d start addressing the legal problems and, okay, they may be angry and suicidal but they’re also…

Jenni Smith: Yes.

Damien Carrick: …presumably terrified?

Jenni Smith: Yes, yes.

Damien Carrick: Sometimes? And in need of immediate legal interventions.

Jenni Smith: Yes. That’s right.

Damien Carrick: What can you do?

Jenni Smith: Depending on what they want, we would assist them to urgently apply for an intervention order. And there’s a great program at the Melbourne Magistrate’s Court, a Koori Support Program. We have a great relationship with Kate Walker, the female support worker there, who will often actually refer clients and she will be the first person that that client sees. So we would be liaising with her either way—doing referrals to her or back to us. So we might…she might ring us and we’d get down to court within about 20 minutes. We’d assist that person to apply for an intervention order. We would go into court with them and often make submissions about the urgency of the need for an interim order. So that’s put in place, within, you know, a very short time.

Damien Carrick: And what about breaches of apprehended violence orders, the terrible case of Andrea Pickett in WA where there were these intervention orders—or their equivalents under WA system—they were in place but they were being breached. If you have a woman in that dire situation, what can you do for them?

Jenni Smith: Yes. Yes. Okay we would be…one of our lawyers or paralegals would go down with that client to the police station to assist them to make a statement. We would be in contact with the police to check whether…where they are in terms of investigating and taking action in relation to those allegations. We’d be nagging basically. We would be writing questions…writing letters if necessary to senior officers for…requesting an explanation why a brief hadn’t been approved, why there wasn’t a charge being made. So we would actually…we would push that. It’s making the inquiries that over-busy police officers might put in a mass of work that they have to do.

So what we’re doing, we’re the naggers that will be forcing that to be apriority and for them to take it seriously. But, you know, in the Andrea Pickett…there was no one to do that for her. There was nobody who was—besides her family—there was no legal supports for her to be, you know, holding the police accountable in those circumstances.

val walsh :

27 Nov 2012 6:26:00pm

great show Thanks and especially thanks to Damien for his efforts and articulating his sister's story so well. He used culturally appropriate and sensitive language in describing the issues around domestic and family violence. In 2008 my mother suffered a heart attack while she was a witness in court to my sister's DV and no one gave mother medical assistance, she took herself to hospital. I discovered what happened after mother's death and I contacted numerous DV support agencies and not one was available, or returned my call. I too felt it was difficult to find anyone doing the job they were paid to do, or anyone who cared about collateral deaths around family violence, they were simply missing in action.

me :

28 Nov 2012 11:59:20am

Dear Val,I am sorry to hear that.~May she rest in Peace~Your experience shows a terrible lack of duty of care by the Court. The Court which sits in our name, whether we like it or not. As a witness she is at the service of the Court & that institution has ethical responsibility for her health while she is in their service, ie attending the Court.What is the duty of Court support staff in this situation?What is the duty of the Prosecution whose witness she is acting as?What is the role of the hearing Judge regarding medical emergencies?What about the role of the Coroner? (Not that I'd wish the stress of a Coronial Inquest on any family.)I think this issue needs serious investigation, as stress in very common in Court, & Court would be a high risk for stress related health problems.I'm sorry for your loss, it is our collective responsibility. She was put at risk in our name. Your family should not have had to suffer this, & certainly not in the hope of making the world a safer place for people, using the flawed systems available.Regards.

Debbie :

27 Nov 2012 6:38:05pm

Thanks for the powerful and informative program. Gary, Andrea's brother, spoke so clearly and sensibly about how the system let Andrea down. We need to hear about these cases and we need to make changes so that women and children do not have to face such tragic deaths. I hope the politicians, the police, the courts and human services are listening.

Darren Lewin-Hill :

28 Nov 2012 9:47:52am

Thanks for this important program. In Victoria, family violence prevention advocates are petitioning the State Government to fund family violence death reviews. The reviews are vital to inform coronial inquests into family violence deaths and support strong findings aiming to prevent future deaths from family violence. A petition to achieve a funding commitment is currently running through change.org:

Libby Eltringham :

29 Nov 2012 3:14:43pm

Thanks for a great program. As Andrea Pickett's brother Gary highlighted, Andrea's death was so clearly avoidable. Family violence death reviews can't bring back women murdered by violent partners or ex-husbands; they can however examine how and why those deaths occurred, with a view to fixing the services and systems that let these women down in order to prevent further deaths. The first report of the Victorian Systemic Review of Family Violence Deaths has just been released; at the same time the Review is under threat due to lack of funding. http://www.coronerscourt.vic.gov.au/find/publications/victorian+systemic+review+of+family+violence+deaths+_+first+reportVictorian advocates have a petition running to urge the Baillieu Government to commit dedicated funding to the Review:https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/fund-the-victorian-systemic-review-of-family-violence-deaths